Saturday, March 11, 2017

Gloriously Baffling: The Real Story Behind "Sonny the Monster" (Part 3)

This is the third of three posts about my cover of the song "Sonny the Monster," which became part of the Guided by Voices canon when it appeared on the compilation Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now. This post goes into some detail about the arranging and recording process, so if you're not interested in that, you're welcome to skip to the last few paragraphs. If you haven't yet read parts one or two, you might want to check them out first.

Anatomy of a Weird Cover Song

The basic song structure of "Sonny the Monster" as I recalled it was verse-chorus, with variations in the verses and repeats on the tail end of the second and third choruses that functioned as a sort of bridge. The first verse is repeated at the end with a key change from G to A. There's a final repeat of the chord changes from the last line of the chorus (D -> c# min -> b min ->A) , and the song ends.

In the original, as I remembered it, the chords in both the verse and chorus are the same, power chords that followed the bass line exactly: G->F#->C->D repeated, until you got to the last line of the chorus, when it switched to a stepwise downward progression (C->b min->a min->G). I never cared for the power chords in the verse and chorus because to my ear they clashed with the melody, so I tweaked them more to my liking.

The verses I kept simple, just laying the melody over the bassline with no real chords until the final repeat of the first verse, right before the end of the song. When I wanted full chords at the end I played (in the key of A) A->E->D->E (a very Townsend-ish thing to do, I thought at the time). However, I left the bassline the same, so the E chord had a G# bass note. To make the chords on the chorus sound a little different, on the line "picks me off my feet . . ." I used a slightly different chord structure, going G->b min->C->D, which for me did two things. First, the bass line moved more naturally in thirds and fifths with the melody. Second, it distinguished the chorus enough that you could tell it wasn't just a repeat of the verse.

With all that established, now I had to record. I had accumulated a lot of gear over the previous few years. My main keyboard was a Roland Alpha Juno 2, but I also had a Yamaha DX-100 keyboard and Yamaha TX81Z and Roland MT32 sound modules. Even though I still had the drums I'd played since I was a teenager (including with Anacrusis), I didn't have a lot of microphones to use for recording them, so I augmented the rig with a Roland TR-505 drum machine. I rounded out the whole thing with a Fender Jaguar guitar that I ran through a little Gorilla amp, and my trusty Alvarez nylon string folk/classical guitar. My recording device of choice was the Yamaha MT2X 4-track cassette recorder. I rounded out the rig with an Alesis digital reverb. Of all the stuff I just listed, the Alvarez guitar is the only instrument I still have. I sold off all the rest in bits and pieces over the years. (It’s also the only instrument I did not use on “Sonny.”) Now, like many others, I'm entirely computer-based.

With sequencing and a number of different modules tied together via MIDI, I could do almost the whole arrangement of the song and then play back the sequence while recording it onto two tracks of my MT2X four-track cassette. I had to be careful though, since I only had about 4,700 or so notes to play with on my Yamaha QX7 sequencer.

I started by sequencing the bass on the Yamaha DX100. It had a nice, punchy bass patch called “Lately Bass” that I used heavily. That gave me a bare minimum musical outline that I could lay stuff over. Then I tracked the drum machine. I avoided just using canned patterns wherever I could, preferring to tap the drum parts out on the Roland Alpha Juno 2 acting as a MIDI controller. It could be painstaking at times, especially when I was trying to do more than two instruments at a time, like kick, snare and hat all at once. But I got through it. I wanted a fingersnap, but none of the tone modules had a sample for that, so I improvised and used a castanet sample (I think from the Roland MT32, though I don't remember for sure now). In like fashion. I sequenced different keyboard and synth parts. A tweak here, a little quantization there, and I was ready to track the instruments. (A note in passing: the pounding drum in the last verse that Wires and Waves called an "unnecessary double kick-drum" was actually an unnecessary floor tom.)

One of the great things about the MT2X was that it had six inputs that I could route to a two track stereo mix. That allowed me to have the synths/modules all output in mono to different inputs of the MT2X. The bass and drums were panned center, and other stuff to the left or right to give it a little stereo interest. (Track sheets? Are you kidding? I had stuff to do!) The last input on the MT2X I reserved for my Fender Jag, which I routed clean and panned a bit to the left, with lots of bridge pickup for a nice jangly sound. I played the Jag live along with the sequenced tracks as I recorded them. The only other instrument I recall playing live was a synth part I punched in (inserted into one of the vocal tracks) with the goofy little ghost sound (I think that patch was called "Goblins" or something) that leads into the third verse.

I wanted a big, thick vocal sound. Ever since I first heard the chorus of Lou Christie’s 1960s hit “Lightnin’ Strikes,” I’ve been a sucker for tight vocal harmonies. The trouble was, having laid the instruments on two tracks, I had only two left for vocals. Standard procedure back in that day was to record the backing vocals first. You started out with one of the backing vocal parts on, say, track 3 (assuming the instruments are mixed to stereo on tracks 1 and 2). You then recorded another backing vocal on track 4, mixing in the vocal from track 3 as you went. You ended up with two vocal parts on track 4. You could then repeat the process, going the other way, recording a third vocal on track 3 (and in the process erasing what was there before) and mixing in the two vocals from track 4, ending up with three vocal parts on track 3. (Rinse. Repeat).

The process was known affectionately as "bouncing." You couldn't bounce too much, though, because eventually you would develop tape hiss and the signal would degrade. I also threw in some reverb (thanks to my Alesis ProVerb) to good effect, as in the backing vocal that echoed the words "long black car" in the second verse. I think I did five background vocal overdubs in all, before going back to and recording the lead vocal by itself on track 3 (Or was it 4? Never mind.)

I put in one final touch at the very end. If you listen closely as the song is fading out, you may be able to catch a low, soft voice panned hard left in the stereo field. It’s "Sonny," cursing under his breath as he walks away.

Working with instruments going to two-track stereo and bouncing vocals around meant I had to do a lot of the mixing of the song as I was recording. If I went back and found that a certain vocal or instrument was a little louder than I really wanted after the fact, that was too bad (and it killed me). In the end, I mixed the instruments and vocals to the best of my ability (which wasn't super then for sure) down to a stereo cassette deck and took the tape around along with other music I’d done to share with a few close friends and fellow musicians.

I have a few of my recordings from the 1980s in mp3 format and maybe someday I'll stick some of them on Bandcamp or Soundcloud just for grins. Don't hold your breath, though. If anything, I'm sort of the "anti-Bob." I'm hesitant to put anything out there that I don't consider worthy (meaning most of it). I am definitely my own worst critic. It’s almost miraculous that I’ve put out so much stock music over the past four-plus years. The fact is, my cover of "Sonny" might have stayed buried, except that I had a brief stint in GbV myself in 1989, and once played the song for Bob. He seemed to get a kick out of it, and I remembered many years later while digitizing a bunch of my old stuff, and sent the mp3 to Rich.

That brings it full circle. By the time I realized that “Sonny” had actually seen the light of day, I found to my surprise that the song had taken on a life of its own. Mark Deming, writing for AllMusic, didn't have much positive to say about Suitcase 3 as a whole, but did single out "Sonny," calling it "gloriously baffling." (http://www.allmusic.com/album/suitcase-3-up-we-go-now-mw0001327408) Other comments I saw found it bewildering, to say the least. One poster referred to me as a “truck driver hick,” which is false. (I drive a sedan.)

Most of the true GbV fans who weighed in, though, seemed to enjoy it. I'm glad that the fans have had as much fun with “Sonny” as I did. Just taking this trip down memory lane has been fun, too. Who knows? After this, I might even try my hand at fiction. I know just how to start my novel, too.

"Over on the west side of town . . ."

For more on my history with GbV, click here.

5 comments:

  1. As someone who just stumbled on this one today (the gbv catalogue is just so massive) I was very happy to read this first-hand account of how it came to be. Thanks Smitty!

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  2. one of the best suitcase tracks

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  3. Release the Anacrusis live recordings!

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    1. Sounds like a great idea! Unfortunately, I don't have any of those recordings in my possession. It would be a treat to go back now and hear those live shows. We rocked pretty hard back in the day.

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